Yes there needs to be a proactive response to the issue, I would favour public information campaigns against it but I think that a ban simmilar to that against FGM could be an option.

But I don't see how this is a failure of multiculturalism? Have we tried to get them to stop? Have we made it clear that the practice is unaccpetable?

Lef, there are many different forms of FGM. Some are seen to be analogous to male circumcision. The removal of the clitoral hood beeing somewhat similar to the removal of the foreskin. It is a cosmetic change which does not hugely reduce sexual pleasure.

The penetration of the bride's infibulation takes anywhere from 3 or 4 days to several months. Some men are unable to penetrate their wives at all (in my study over 15%), and the task is often accomplished by a midwife under conditions of great secrecy, since this reflects negatively on the man's potency. Some who are unable to penetrate their wives manage to get them pregnant in spite of the infibulation, and the woman's vaginal passage is then cut open to allow birth to take place. A great deal of marital anal intercourse takes place in cases where the wife can not be penetrated—quite logically in a culture where homosexual anal intercourse is a commonly accepted premarital recourse among men—but this is not readily discussed. Those men who do manage to penetrate their wives do so often, or perhaps always, with the help of the "little knife." This creates a tear which they gradually rip more and more until the opening is sufficient to admit the penis. In some women, the scar tissue is so hardened and overgrown with keloidal formations that it can only be cut with very strong surgical scissors, as is reported by doctors who relate cases where they broke scalpels in the attempt.[39]

They are all creepy and wrong and barbaric but some are much worse than others.

Last edited by ryanm34; Feb 17 2012 at 04:58 AM.

"But the modern Irish, contrary to popular impression, have little sense of history. What they have is a sense of grievance, which they choose to dignify by christening it history. History therefore is 'not so much a matter of learning from the past as of stirring old grievances to keep them on the boil'."

Female "circumcision" =/= Male circumcision - by any stretch of the imagination. Read "A Caged Virgin" and educate yourself. The female version is beyond barbaric and is done to satisfy insecure males that their women cannot enjoy sex and are therefore less likely to cheat on husbands. It is often done with pieces of broken glass bottles, in horribly unclean circumstances. It is mutilation.

So take your pomposity and shove it where the sun does not shine!

Leffe,...

You know, as you can read in my OP I'm feeling pretty bad and confused because I'm challenging myself intellectually.

You would be wise to do the same.

It is not because male circumcision has been "clinicalized" and "medicalized" it is any less barbaric.

Circumcision, male and female, is mutilation and infringmenent on the individual. Case closed.

What you are basically raging against is the underdevelopedness (?) of certain cultures, as compared to ours. Meanwhile, you have no problem whatsoever with an other sort of circumcision preformed in an operating theatre by a certified doctor while it is preformed for the excact same reason.

That is, Leffe, hypocrisy to the highest degree.

We even give male pigs more rights (as in: no castration anymore, or at least they need to be given tranquilizers) than newborn male babies.

And I don't see any sign of pomposity on my part whatsoever -- it is not my fault you lack arguments to make a comprehensive post on this topic.

“The world is big enough to satisfy everyones needs, but will always be too small to satisfy everyones greed.” ~ Ghandi

You have a hope in bloody hell on banning male circumcision; it's a religious thing and therefore no government will change the law. This is the simple fact of the matter. Additionally, the vast majority of males who are circumcised as babies go on to have normal sex lives. This cannot be said of female mutilation. This has no history in religion and prevents a woman from having a normal sex life.

I would place my energies in the more important of the two issues; the one where laws are more likely enacted.

This is not a religious debate, well -- it shouldn't ought to be one. Let it put me that way...

In the classic nature/nurture debate upon humanity -- some argue that children, in essence, are a tabula rasa.

I agree on that, to a certain degree.

Religion, or religious beliefs, is an entire belief system that is thaught to the individual via all sort of ways, institutions, etc.

Now,...

Where is the religious freedom of the child -- where is the freedom of the individual to make the choice for himself if he believes in all of this hocus-pocus and that, for the sake of being a "good follower of the faith", he needs to cut off his foreskin?

Jews basically do it as a sacrifice to Jaweh, Muslims mainly do it because of it being a cultural tradition and because the Prohpher said something about it (although, converts don't have to obide this "law").

The thing is, that removing the foreskin is not like dying your hair or piercing the ears. It is forever, and it can't be restored. It has an enormous impact.

It is not something trivial.

Even, if it were a religious thing -- I don't see the validity in your argument either. Is it, because it is a *religious* (barbaric) practice we somehow need to be tolerant towards it? Yeah, what's next then, if we follow that line of logic? That way, doctors ought to be allowed to preform female circumcision in state-funded hospitals by state-paid medical staff. Or now the mayor will be inclined to marry a man and his three wives.

Where do you draw the line?

As far as I'm concerned, this isn't a religious issue -- it is about basic (human) rights. Parents nowadays are not allowed to slap their children around, but they are allowed to cut of the foresking of their male newborns.

Talk about twisted and moral decay!

“The world is big enough to satisfy everyones needs, but will always be too small to satisfy everyones greed.” ~ Ghandi

You know, as you can read in my OP I'm feeling pretty bad and confused because I'm challenging myself intellectually.

You would be wise to do the same.

It is not because male circumcision has been "clinicalized" and "medicalized" it is any less barbaric.

Circumcision, male and female, is mutilation and infringmenent on the individual. Case closed.

What you are basically raging against is the underdevelopedness (?) of certain cultures, as compared to ours. Meanwhile, you have no problem whatsoever with an other sort of circumcision preformed in an operating theatre by a certified doctor while it is preformed for the excact same reason.

That is, Leffe, hypocrisy to the highest degree.

We even give male pigs more rights (as in: no castration anymore, or at least they need to be given tranquilizers) than newborn male babies.

And I don't see any sign of pomposity on my part whatsoever -- it is not my fault you lack arguments to make a comprehensive post on this topic.

Please stop throwing around your childish and petty little insults, I presume this had something to do with your recent ban.

My point is simple. You have zero chance of banning male circumcision; it is ingrained in the jewish religion and is therefore untouchable.

Female mutilation is significantly worse, significantly! On two fronts:

1) The intent: The intent is to prevent women from enjoying sex, as the men in this society do not trust women not to cheat on them.

2) It is done behind closed doors, by (*)(*)(*)(*)ing butchers, in unsterile conditions.

I do not agree with any form of this, male or female, I'm simply more interested in dealing with the more pressing issue, which is female mutilation. And I'll say for the 3rd time - you will not change the laws regarding male circumcision.

Did you not make it a religious thing by naming the thread on Muslims, Secularism and Failures of Multiculturalism?

According to the history I found my dad probably got it done to him as an adult when he was in WW2.

I remember when I was in Canada in the 70's the people I was staying with had a baby and they had it circumcised because they wanted him 'to look like everyone else'

Some people went for circumcision as they believed it stopped masturbation and supposedly to stop diseases. Now possibly the only reason left is religion but I hardly see it as having anything to do with multiculturalism as so much of the West has been up to it for so long. Why not just a debate on circumcision? Why relate it to Muslims and to the failure of Multiculturalism. Not only that there are always plenty of people who argue in favour of circumcision for men and I very much doubt they are all Muslims or Jews (who you did not even put in)

This is not a religious debate, well -- it shouldn't ought to be one. Let it put me that way...

In the classic nature/nurture debate upon humanity -- some argue that children, in essence, are a tabula rasa.

I agree on that, to a certain degree.

Religion, or religious beliefs, is an entire belief system that is thaught to the individual via all sort of ways, institutions, etc.

Now,...

Where is the religious freedom of the child -- where is the freedom of the individual to make the choice for himself if he believes in all of this hocus-pocus and that, for the sake of being a "good follower of the faith", he needs to cut off his foreskin?

Jews basically do it as a sacrifice to Jaweh, Muslims mainly do it because of it being a cultural tradition and because the Prohpher said something about it (although, converts don't have to obide this "law").

The thing is, that removing the foreskin is not like dying your hair or piercing the ears. It is forever, and it can't be restored. It has an enormous impact.

It is not something trivial.

Even, if it were a religious thing -- I don't see the validity in your argument either. Is it, because it is a *religious* (barbaric) practice we somehow need to be tolerant towards it? Yeah, what's next then, if we follow that line of logic? That way, doctors ought to be allowed to preform female circumcision in state-funded hospitals by state-paid medical staff. Or now the mayor will be inclined to marry a man and his three wives.

Where do you draw the line?

As far as I'm concerned, this isn't a religious issue -- it is about basic (human) rights. Parents nowadays are not allowed to slap their children around, but they are allowed to cut of the foresking of their male newborns.

Talk about twisted and moral decay!

I haven't said it SHOULD be a religious issue, I'm saying it is. I'm an atheist and a secularist (you should know that), so I'm hardly in favour of this, I'm just realistic.

Yes there needs to be a proactive response to the issue, I would favour public information campaigns against it but I think that a ban simmilar to that against FGM could be an option.

Well, Ryanm34 -- I never said I favoured a ban, now did I? Well, at least not initially. If we would impose a ban, they would just take all of their children to Morrocco or Tunisia or something.

I've got a gruwesome story to tell.

As you might know, or not -- I often worked student jobs involving children (3-16 y.o.). One time, I worked for the Flemish Ministry in their offices in Antwerp to take care of the children of the civil servants. Anyways, there was a boy and a girl from Muslim descent. The mother and father were awefully nice. They also told me that it was the first time their son (6 y.o.) actually liked coming to day care because there was a male supervising; mostly it all are women and they are pretty lame (drawing, reading,...) instead of playing more "rough" games like football, baseball, etc. Anyways, children can be extremely funny and enormously politically incorrect. As the saying goes: "De waarheid komt uit een kindermond" (or: "The truth comes out of a child's mouth"). Anyways, the subject was "holiday" -- and the brother and sister started talking about how they go to Morrocco every year to visit their grandparents and eat ice-cream, etc. And then, out of the blue, the boy starts talking about his visit last year and his circumcision! How it hurt and how he was crying, but then his uncle said that brave boys don't cry and that he would get a present and that he then received a small present first, he stopped crying, and received the big present. And his uncle and grandpa told nice things to him. I guess, the entire story made him feel proud of him "being a big boy now". Needless to say, I was freaking out completely back then... although the entire episode only lasted a minute or so.

So, a ban wouldn't help initially. We could make it harder though, e.g. mortuarium on all circumcisions under the age of twelve.

And a public information campaign is very neccessary, indeed. That is how I would like the government to procceed.

But I don't see how this is a failure of multiculturalism? Have we tried to get them to stop? Have we made it clear that the practice is unaccpetable?

The title of the thread needs to be seen in the bigger picture, Ryan. Only read a couple of posts in this thread, like Leffe's. There is a failure to address certain barbaric practices for the sake of political correctness and to preserve "the peace" -- instead of doing the right thing, which is what secularism is all about in my perspective.

“The world is big enough to satisfy everyones needs, but will always be too small to satisfy everyones greed.” ~ Ghandi

Did you not make it a religious thing by naming the thread on Muslims, Secularism and Failures of Multiculturalism?

According to the history I found my dad probably got it done to him as an adult when he was in WW2.

I remember when I was in Canada in the 70's the people I was staying with had a baby and they had it circumcised because they wanted him 'to look like everyone else'

Some people went for circumcision as they believed it stopped masturbation and supposedly to stop diseases. Now possibly the only reason left is religion but I hardly see it as having anything to do with multiculturalism as so much of the West has been up to it for so long. Why not just a debate on circumcision? Why relate it to Muslims and to the failure of Multiculturalism. Not only that there are always plenty of people who argue in favour of circumcision for men and I very much doubt they are all Muslims or Jews (who you did not even put in)

For non-jews and non-muslims in Eurpoe I think it's not common. In the US, christians are mainly circumcised.

In this regard, I have no problem with Jap pointing out that indeed it looks like ME immigrants are bringing this practice over. But we didn't complain so much when jews were doing it (and they've lived in Europe a very long time). Of course the muslims are in Europe in significant enough numbers to raise the statistics now. But, there's nothing that either can or will be done.

I would urge people to read "The Caged Virgin", a book which details the horrible practice of female mutilation in the NL. I believe it would focus people's attention on to a far more serious issue.

Please stop throwing around your childish and petty little insults, I presume this had something to do with your recent ban.

My point is simple. You have zero chance of banning male circumcision; it is ingrained in the jewish religion and is therefore untouchable.

Female mutilation is significantly worse, significantly! On two fronts:

1) The intent: The intent is to prevent women from enjoying sex, as the men in this society do not trust women not to cheat on them.

2) It is done behind closed doors, by (*)(*)(*)(*)ing butchers, in unsterile conditions.

I do not agree with any form of this, male or female, I'm simply more interested in dealing with the more pressing issue, which is female mutilation. And I'll say for the 3rd time - you will not change the laws regarding male circumcision.

Leffe, I'd like you to point out how I insulted you or threw around childish slurs. Thanks on advance, you can send me a PM if you wished so -- either way, the effort on your part would be highly appreciated by myself. But, please, don't go out and around and make rather strange assumptions on the dealings between myself and the moderators.

It is entirely strange that you consider female circumcision the "more pressing issue".

It is pretty clear, that "thinking for oneself" has lost his swagger in our respective socities. How on Earth can you call female circumcision the more pressing issue, when the entire practice is rather rare to begin with -- certain in our lands -- whilst male circumcision is rountinly, systematically, and on an enormous scale (+1300%, to a total of 40% of all newborns) being conducted?

“The world is big enough to satisfy everyones needs, but will always be too small to satisfy everyones greed.” ~ Ghandi